


The bonds you reject

by TerresDeBrume



Series: FotSM Verse [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Break Up, Dragons, Elves, Fantasy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 07:45:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/937376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> <em>No one but myself decides who I should be bound to –and I will not be bound to the new you.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	The bonds you reject

**Author's Note:**

>  This is a rewrite of an older piece, which I wrote in 2010, and takes place several centuries before _Don't stop, don't talk, don't look back_.

He finds her at the very edge of the clearing, with a bag of food and a sheepskin of water as her only baggage, her cape tightly wrapped around herself to keep the cold out.

He breathes hard, as he always does, and she knows without turning that his forehead must be covered in sweat, that his son –the dragons’ son- is probably somewhere close behind, trailing his father and his dragon like a duckling every time they are near… not her though. Never her.

 

She wouldn’t want him to, either.

She never wanted a child, and would have been happy to remain alone with him forever, but the Split, and her subsequent transformation, quickened her womb again. She had thought –hoped- that she would remain barren, that no life would come to invade a body she had suffer in, to live in despite the loss of everything she once was.

When her blonde hair became brown, when her skin turned from a slight tan to the deep brown of soft earth, when she started feeling sap flowing through the trees, she had thought it would be the last of her unwanted changes.

She remembers the way he hugged her when it was all over, when they were both alive and free of pain –orphans, yes, having lost all family to the Split, but alive and together still. They had left the southern cities, gone to the mountains to accommodate his newfound need for life –oh, how embarrassing it was to watch him shed his cape, his shirt, and then even _breeches_ to walk outside, how difficult to accept the necessity of his near-nakedness… her own bare feet were a small thing by comparison, her urge to climb trees from time to time, an easy concession.

 

Then they had reached the mountains, and found cadavers where they had expected dragons.

Thousands of them littering the ground, flying dragons mangled from thousands feet falls, boulder dragons lying there like rocks from an avalanche, running dragons with their skeletons stretched as far as it would go, as if they’d been caught mid-run, stopped by what she would learn was the sudden onslaught of every living being’s thoughts and hopes and fear… and their pain, too.

They never went that far north, but she learned later that swimming dragons, although those with the most population left thanks to the distance they could put between bipeds and themselves, had suffered, too. In total, less than a thousand dragons survived the Split, and those who did had died by the hundred before anyone understood what it was they needed.

 

And then, when they arrived, _he_ was bound.

 

 

“Saÿla,” he says, stopping at the first three stubs, “why are you going outside alone? You know the protection runes are lost! If a predator should attack you—”

 

 

He trails off, abruptly, the same way he does whenever his dragon tries to speak in his head.

The dragons –because the dragons are always the ones dictating things- that once an elf and a hatchling join their minds, they are bound… she doesn’t like to admit it, but on this at least they are right. Alathian _is_ bound to his dragon, joined at the hip, even.

Since they have been there, he has never done anything without it, never done anything that wasn’t _for_ it. She may not love the child she bore, she may not have wanted him, but _she_ never _forgot_ about him. _He_ does. Always gone traveling, looking for other elves to trick into this life of caring for eggs, cleaning scales, building houses in a network of caves no elf had ever been allowed to see before… how ironic, truly, that these creatures, who used to eat elves and dwarves alike, demand things from them, were now completely unable to survive without them.

 

And how truly _despicable_ , that all of them –not only him, but all of those who came here- should measure their own worth by the amount of use they are to the dragons, that they would go so far as to let dragons raise their own children!

 

 

“I don’t care about attacks,” she tells the forest before her, smiling slightly when she realizes she means it. “I am sick of this place.”

“Saÿla, I know this isn’t perfect, and the caves weren’t build for elves,” he apologizes, “but the dragons—”

“Dragons!” she spits, turning back to round on him, “Dragons are all you ever speak about!”

 

 

He takes a step back when she reaches him, the light of his skin flickering as his white hair flies in the wind, and the dull thud of a toddler’s bottom hitting soft ground drifts to her ears, almost lazily.

 

 

“I never wanted a child!” She continues, punching him in the chest –with little effect, if any. “You were the one who cried with joy once we realized I was pregnant! You were the one who promised the boy to always be there for him, _you_ should be the one caring for him, not some kind of glorified firesnake!”

 

 

At their feet, the child is cooing, laughing at the way the earth ripples around his mother’s – _her_ feet. He looks strange with his golden eyes and brown hair, unlike any elf she has met after the Split, but even she can see he is a lively, happy child. Even she can see there is no reason someone who _wishes_ to be a parent should leave him behind.

 

 

“You don’t _care_ for him!” her lover –former lover now- protests. “You said yourself that you wanted nothing to do with him!”

“And I _don’t_ ,” she confirms, “I never lied! _You_ , on the other hand, swore you would be by his side forever, and that you would care for him, but you don’t!” She huffs. “I may be a bad mother, but at the very least I am not a liar!”

 

 

She pauses, breathing hard, to tug her skirts away from the child’s grabby hands –she will not be tricked into assuming a role she never wanted in the first place. She has money. She knows her herbs. She will drink the cycle drink every day of her life if she has to, but she will not bear another child, and she will _not_ be a mother if she can help it.

 

 

“These creatures used to _eat us_ not eight centuries ago,” she reminds the other elf, “they used to treat us like excrement and despise us –maybe they respect those of us who are bound to them, but I am not. I am still free, and I will remain free. No one but myself decides who I should be bound to –and I will not be bound to the new _you_.”

 

Before the Dragons –before the Split, before _many things_ , he would not have backed down.

She was a noble and he a mere stable boy, but he never learned to stop trying, never took no for an answer unless it came from her and _that_ was one of the reasons she fell for him. She had loved how he refused to let anyone but her decide if she was good enough for her –he had seemed to _understand_ that she was not a piece of merchandise to be traded off… but she has not seen any of this since they met the dragons, and today is the day she stops pretending she has any hope of it ever coming back.

 

Not for her, at least.

 

 

“I know what I risk by leaving,” she says, setting her gaze south once more, “but I also know what I will lose if I stay. For your son’s sake,” she concludes with a sigh, “I hope you realize what you have let go of, too.”

 

 

The first step is the hardest.

But then, as she makes her legs keep working, each new move is easier than the last, and her breathing eases into the familiar pattern of long walks and hot days spent running in the threes with her brothers, her shoulders settle in the feeling she could go anywhere like this.

 

There _is_ a very distinct possibility that she will die before she reaches whatever is left of the city she was born in, but at least if she dies, she will die on her own terms.

 

 

(Much, much later, she meets a young elf with the droopy ears of light elves and the same brown hair as her own, and she figures her parting words must have had some kind of impact on his father, after all.)

**Author's Note:**

> This version is a lot closer to what ‘Matheï’s mother was like, and the real reasons why she left. I might end up writing the way the two of them meet, at some point -I think it’d be interesting to do. In the meantime, any kind of comments or critique is appreciated :)


End file.
